Tuesday, February 14, 2012

How Using Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to Market Your Personal Training Business?

Unless you've been living on Mars for the last 7 years, you will know of Facebook and its massive popularity (500 Million users and counting) and agree with it or not agree with it, as a business owner, we can't ignore a platform of that size

Before we go into it! I don't think Social Media is the Be all and End all when it comes to demonstrating your expertise and marketing your business, I think you need to be physically networking with people and interacting in the real world to get fitness clients and social media marketing should not interfere in real world interactions...OK out of my system

Here are 10 steps to get you started in marketing your page on Facebook

5. Post in the evenings when Facebook traffic is at it's highest, between 6pm and 11pm

6. Include a "call to action" in your posts e.g. "Like this status if fat loss is your goal" the more people like it, the more that status (therefore your page) travels around

7. Add Videos where possible

8. Put inspirational/funny pictures/quotes on your page, they get lots of likes, don't overdo it though or you'll appear flakey

9. Give free good quality snippets of advice, don't sell all the time

10. Take pictures of your clients/bootcamps (with permission) and post them up, nothing worse than a PTs page and its all him, him, him! Don't forget to tag them is pictures and also in posts

OK - I'll say it, I just don't see the point in twitter, or rather, I don't see how it got so popular, considering all I see is drivel written on it!

BUT I (or you) cannot ignore the size of the platform. People use Twitter and it can lead to opportunities that you never thought possible, so we need to make an effort with it, maybe I'm too old

So here are 5 steps to start getting your business out there with Twitter

1. Get an Account, a good one to attempt to get possibly would be @(yourcity)personaltrainer, or you could do your business name

2. Getting Followers, the whole point of twitter is to get people following you, so go to search.twitter.com and enter in your niche e.g. lets say your demographic is housewives in Manchester, you'd search for "Manchester Mums", you'll then get a list of people to follow, just work down the list and click "follow" Hopefully They follow you back. Check your followers regularly and make sure you follow them back. Your followers will build over time, sometimes quite quickly

4. Mention Clients in Tweets, you can do this by putting a @ infront of their twitter user name

5. Same as Facebook, use Twitter to Build Relationships, give away free reports and throw in the odd pitch for a new offer/bootcamp/Running Club you are starting up

The best bit about social media marketing for personal Trainer Marketing is that its FREE, always good when starting out in business as your investment is your time and a bit of creativity. I built up my Personal Training in Bristol business up in just this way

Finally in regards to social media, lets look at YouTube Marketing

1. There is really no excuse for not putting a video together, you can do it in an empty studio, a digital camera and an adjustable step

2. Do the videos within your niche and make them action based i.e. you explaining and doing the exercises, or just doing the exercises